It has no editors, no fact checkers and anyone can contribute an entry - or delete one. It should have been a recipe for disaster, but instead Wikipedia became one of the internet's most inspiring success stories. Simon Waldman explains how.

Simon Waldman came across a copy of Homes and Gardens from 1938 which featured an article about Hitler's house, and posted it to his weblog. This started a bizarre series of events that saw him embroiled in legal wrangles and denounced as a Nazi sympathiser.

Yet another great idea for becoming a millionaire that I never did anything about. First, get a job working in the internet division of a national newspaper. Next, charge £10 every time you get asked: "So, will you actually scoop the newspaper?".

Congratulations to The Register webzine for a wonderful little scoop last week. Thanks to the wonder of email, it got its hands on an internal memo from Alasdair MacLeod, the managing director of News Network, the News International internet division. The memo is a summary of the findings of a staff survey and suggests that all is less than blissful in the wired world of Wapping.

Another week, another new media executive leaves a newspaper group. Danny Meadows Klue, publisher of the electronic Telegraph has announced he is off to do something "dot.com-ish". Before that, as reported on these pages last week, Martin Dunn had announced he was leaving Associated's new media arm.

There is a new holy trinity for the new millennium - a new mantra on every aspirant cyber squillionaire's lips. In order to succeed, you have to rise early and chant it for several hours. Let's practice. Repeat after me: "Content, community, commerce; content, community, commerce . . . "

It might be paranoia, but I can't seem to get away from these voices telling me to use the internet. They are everywhere - on posters, when I switch on the radio, on TV and in the paper. It is getting too much for me to take in. I believe there is even a medical term for my problem: "dot com-fusion".

It's not a religion, but one in five people in Britain is a recent convert. Nobody owns it, but it's the basis of hundreds of new businesses. And it's changing the way we work, play, communicate and think. In the first of a week-long series of reports on how to make the most of the internet, Simon Waldman charts five years in which Britain took the leap into cyberspace

I have seen the future of news, and it's lovely. Well, I am not completely convinced it's the future of news, but Stuart Purvis, ITN's chief executive, is, and he seems to know a lot more about these things than me.

The head of new media at a big publishing house said something interesting to me the other night. We were drunkenly discussing the pros and cons of various sites and he said: "The thing is, these days, I don't criticise anyone's website - because you never know the fights they've had to fight to get it there."

A few months ago Newsweek carried an uncharacteristically smart cover. Under the heading 'America's Whine of 1999' was a Roy Lichtenstein-style illustration of a man sitting at a desk, his face buried in his hands and beads of sweat dripping from his forehead. From his mouth came the words: "Why is everyone a millionaire except me?"